The Only One
by Esmerelda
Summary: Faith thinks about her new responsibility *spoilery for 'The Gift'*


TITLE: The Only One  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: All characters herein are Joss'.  
TIMELINE: After season 5.  
SPOILERS: 'The Gift'.  
SYNOPSIS: Faith is the only Slayer now.  
DISTRIBUTION: To ask = to have.  
FEEDBACK: *Pretty smile* please?  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
  
She lies on her tiny bunk in the tiny cell and she thinks not-tiny thoughts. She's been there for hours, ever since the guards came to get her and, surprised, she was taken to a room where Angel was waiting and she could see him without a glass barrier, only a discreet warden standing in a corner.  
  
She hadn't thought what that privacy meant, just smiled in delight and gone to hug him. He'd embraced her back, tightly, and then he'd set her away from him, keeping both hands on her shoulders, and she'd looked into his eyes in confusion, and only then had she noted their redness.  
  
That couldn't be right, surely? Angel didn't cry.  
  
But he had, and he did again as he told her, toneless and quiet, though sounding abnormally loud in the noiseless room... he'd said in a few clipped sentences that Buffy was dead, had died protecting Dawn (who was Dawn?) and the world. Again.  
  
Faith had frowned and shaken her head, because that couldn't be right, Buffy wouldn't go and do something like *die*. Would she?  
  
And he'd nodded gravely, his eyes fixed to her face, and he'd said reluctantly that Giles was speaking to the Watcher's Council (she'd flinched instinctively at that) about getting her a lawyer and trying for early parole so to keep her nose clean, okay, because now she was...  
  
And then Faith had got it, and she was still getting it, lying on the bed her cellmates were staying away from. She didn't have any friends inside, but there was a woman, Jeanette, better than the others, and Faith was absently grateful that she was keeping people away.  
  
Thinking about it, she'd realised that on some level, she'd known. Before walking away from Angel numbly, ignoring his call as she trailed back to her cell, she'd asked him when, and without even meaning to her mind had instantly put it together. The night he'd told her Buffy had died, Faith remembered feeling something shift in herself; a new peace had overcome her (now shattered) and she'd felt as if power was washing through her, learning her, making her strong.  
  
Whatever it was that made a Slayer the Slayer had returned to Faith with Buffy's death. Her second death: the death that had returned the Slayer line to how it was supposed to be.  
  
One girl in all the world.  
  
Now it's Faith. And Faith doesn't know if she's up to it.  
  
She knows she has all the Slayer attributes, still; she can stay in the gym for hours after everyone else is tired, anyone who tries to attack her is severely surprised, and she still feels the indescribable demand of her body for the hunt at the precise moment of sunset.  
  
But she's afraid. Afraid she'll die. Afraid she won't. Afraad she'll never measure up to the Slayer she was compared to, even if only by herself.  
  
There can be no comparisons now. There's only herself.  
  
She hasn't even begun to deal with the realities of Buffy's death as *Buffy's* death yet. It's easier, so far, to think of it as the Slayer's death, a death that simultaneously frees Faith and traps her in a web of duty and body she can't escape.  
  
She tried to escape being the Slayer, and it got her all the way to the state pen.  
  
She tried to escape Buffy - Buffy's shadow - and it got her all the way to the lowest place she's ever been, a place she can almost taste herself returning to.  
  
This time, she doesn't think she'd be able to claw herself out.  
  
She looks around the room, looking idly for... she doesn't want to admit it to herself, but she's looking for a weapon; a weapon against herself. That's the only way she'd get out now. Suicide.. Slayerblood running out or Slayerbreath stopping and Faith stopping and blessed silence or foul screaming and the title would go on to someone different. Someone new. Someone *worthy*.  
  
But she can't do that to another girl. She may end up having to, or doing so unwillingly; if she isn't released from prison soon... well, the world needs its line of defence, and it needs her to be defending. Faith has no illusions about the Watcher's Council, and a lot of suspicions (a lot of fears). Even if she does get out - they don't exactly love her. She shamed them, she shamed the Slayer name, and they'll kill her remorselessly to get a Slayer they can control, claiming it to be to get a Slayer they can trust.  
  
Where would she go? To Angel, perhaps. But when she thought of going to Angel, when she ever thought about After Getting Out, it wasn't as a Slayer, it was as someone who needed help. There's no one else to be the Slayer now. Back to Sunnydale? To infringe on the grief of a group that never truly accepted her, to ceaselessly hear their unspoken accusations that *she* should be dead and Buffy should be alive... no. She doesn't think so.  
  
She'd have to run, and keep running. She doesn't have time to deeply examine her mental state, to heal herself the way she hoped she would be able to. She'll hunt too much and die too soon.  
  
Faith gets up, leaves her cell wordlessly, ignoring the curious stares of the other women. They stare at her anyway. The path she is taking isn't one she's gone down before, but she knows it well.  
  
The chapel is quiet, restful; the one place where the prison seems less of a prison. There's nobody else there and Faith slinks in, unsure of her place and her welcome there, and sits in a pew near to the back.  
  
It is light and airy, with a slight scent of incense. Faith closes her eyes, tips her head back, tried in vain to loosen the tight, knotted muscles in her neck.  
  
When she looks back up, nothing has changed. She's not sure what she expected; an apparition of Buffy, maybe? An apparition of herself?  
  
She takes a moment to visualise her, this girl who was as alike and as different to her as anyone could be. She realises she can't remember her face. She can recall her features perfectly; pristine blonde hair swinging around her shoulders, little button nose, wide, sometimes-friendly mouth, clear green eyes holding a depth of sorrow not even Faith knew. But she can't put those features together; she can't see Buffy's face. That's not unusual. She can't remember her mother's, either, doesn't recall her Watcher's, can't remake the Mayor's.  
  
What she does remember of Buffy is all emotion. Always such a mixture, when it came to Buffy; admiration, hope, like... jealousy, anger, burning hatred.  
  
She'd resented her coming back to life that way, making sure that this one thing, this thing that was supposed to be only Faith's, make her unique - this one thing was shared. She was the *real* Slayer, in terms of lineage, in terms of *right*, of blood... yet Buffy was the real one every other way. She was the older one, the one with the experience and the prestige kills, with the Watcher and the family and friends who knew and supported her anyway, even helped her.  
  
Faith had hated her for that. And then, when she came to see a little more clearly, she'd been thankful, that Buffy had been there to take the weight she herself had collapsed under.  
  
Buffy was everything she wasn't - and now, everything Buffy was, she has to become.  
  
For a moment, she thinks she hears Buffy's laugh.  
  
She returns to her cell, and Faith knows she'll always hear it. 


End file.
